00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number four O two, and today in the show, I'm joined by Spencer new Hearth to review the top events, trends, and nationwide lessons we can all learn from the twenty twenty hunting season. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X, and today we are going to be talking about twenty twenty for the last time. We're not going to look back on that year anymore after today. But what we want to do is something that we we've done most years with me is Spencer new Hearth and the two of us are going to kind of wrap a bow on our rout Fresh radio series. Uh, you guys here year after year. You know what we do. We hear from hunters all across the country every week, find out what kind of activities going on the woods, what different factors like whether or I don't know, hunting pressure or dear behavior are changing what we as hunters should be doing. So we cover that all year. But now here in Spencer and I want to look back on the year kind of review what were some of the notable things that happened, and what can we learn from that, What can we take from and apply to our plans and beyond. Um, there's no better way than reflecting on the past and and thinking about it in a pointed way. So Spencer, that's that's what I'm hoping we can do here. UM. Are you game for that? Absolutely? Um. If if each rut Fresh episode is like a micro look at deer movement, then this is going to be the macro look, and it's something that we've done um d Fresh itself, we've done for five years now. I think this is our third year of doing one of these sort of big UM put a bow on it episodes where we look at the year past and now. After doing this for three years, these recap episodes, there's a few things that jump out at me Um when looking back on the fall, and I'm excited to talk about those in this episode. So you you, I'm glad you said about it. And number two, I was gonna say, you do this thing in the regular Fresh episodes where you ask the guest uh to rate you know, dear activity on a one through ten scale for the past seven days, and then what they expect for the next seven days. So to kick this off, if if you can force yourself to zoom out, all right, imagine you can see yourself sitting in your chair right now. Um, probably maybe you're sitting in your hot tub. Maybe you're surrounded by rocks, all your little collected rocks on the table and the carpeting around you, and maybe two cats on the couch. I would expect if you can zoom out and not only see yourself in this moment, but zoom out and see the entire past, you know, five months of the hunting season, and answer this question, which was if you had to write the quality of the season on a one through ten scale, if you were to, you know, look at all the different factors that affected it and and come to some macro quality quality. What am I trying to say here, some macro determination of the general quality of the season as compared to previous years that we've done this. How would you rate the weather, the factors that all impacted us across the country. My preference would be marked that we saved this question at the end, Um, we now have it's to keep people around for like the next fifty minutes. But I think, um, a lot of what we're gonna talk about between now and then it's gonna kind of set us up for that answer, and I might talk myself into something like a nine, or it might talk myself into a seven. I kind of want to see where this goes before I give you a number. Alright, fine, I'll let you. I'll let you keep us, keep us wondering, and let the anticipation grow. So so that said, then I know you've you've given this some thought, You've kind of reviewed the year and thought through a couple of the high level takeaways or the big kind of headlines of what was what's the first one for you? What really stood out to get us started? The very first one? And this is sort of something that was to be expected based on what Hunter's head witness in the spring, but there was going to be more hunting pressure via COVID this fall. Um, this wasn't really something anecdotal either. A lot of what we're gonna talk about on this episode is gonna be kind of anecdotal based on what I saw, what you saw, what our you know, sixty different guests saw this fall, but the hunting pressure thing is not. We saw increased license sales for spring turkey, we saw increased license sales for just general fishing license in the summer, and we saw increased license sales again for deer hunters. So what did that mean? UM? I remember talking to Tony Peterson who was going to be going on some September hunt this year, and I think it was a place that he had gone many times over and he got there and it was just like the most dudes, UM that he had ever seen in this place. And why would that be? Well, probably because of what we just talked about being COVID. Tony was sort of optimistic coming out of it in that like he was having the same experience as everyone else. Now, Tony had the benefit it of knowing what this area's potential was and that it was a good place to kill deer, But a lot of these people were probably showing up for the first time ever and UM had to deal with all that pressure and then sort of evaluated based on like that one five day trip and probably not want to return again. And so I think you need to consider that often when looking back on the season, if you were going to some new place, if you were hunting some different piece of public land. UM, I hunt a lot of shared permission properties just from knockey on doors and talking to landowners. Same thing for me in those areas where I would usually not see guys out there all that often, or they were very fair weather hunters, that wasn't the case in And I think my best advice overall, if I were talking to somebody about doing odd of state haunts or going to a new area in their state, whatever that might be, and you're hunting public land or doing d I Y knocking on doors, my single best advice would be to try to go during weekdays. It's just such a night and day difference from a Saturday to a Wednesday. Um, no matter what month it is, if it's gunn season, November, archer season in October, it's it's just totally different. Um, the amount of land you can have to yourself. And in those places that I was going to this year, where I was, you know, hunting those d I Y areas on shared land or or public land, whatever that might be, that just didn't apply as much this year as it does in other years. I think that's a single best piece of advice I give you is try to haunt weekdays. And it just like didn't work as well as I would hope in twenty and that's because of this covid um sort of boom in hunting license sales that we just talked about. So when I when I look back on that, I think two things. I think, number one, we saw a boom in hunt of participation for for in two different kind of ways related covid There's number one, that being people who did not hunt in the past who decided to, you know, try it out for the first time because you know, there was more concerned around food. Uh, they couldn't do other things they normally would do, and and all this kind of led them to getting back to the roots and trying this hunting thing. And then the number two thing is that people that previously hunted, people that were hunters but maybe didn't do it a lot, now all of a sudden, they're alternatives have been removed. They can't go to the theater, they can't go shopping, and they can't go out to a restaurant or whatever. So instead they spent more time hunting. So you've got those two things combining to create this increase in hunting pressure. I'm expecting that and beyond, once we get past this pandemic, you're probably gonna see participation go back down to normal levels, is my guess. But you might have some of those new hunters that try it for the first time, they might stick around. So I say all that to give people the I don't want to say hope, because I don't think it's a bad thing to have more hunters out there, but but know that this will probably go down to some degree in the next season or two. Um. But but that's not necessarily you know something that's that's a good thing. As I want to close this rambling thought here by saying that while the added hunting pressure is uh frustrating at times and can make your personal hunting more difficult, it's not a bad thing that there's new people out there. It's it's it's a good thing for the long term future of hunting. So rather than bemoaning all these new hunters out there and how they messed up your hunts, I would encourage us all to you know, adapt to it, adjust to it, make sure you can still reach your personal goals. Etcetera. But how about reaching out to one of these new hunters. How about seeing someone out there in the woods and you talk to him for a second, you find out that hey, this is first time doing it. Rather than being pissed that he messed up your spot, what about offering him or her hand and suggesting that they try this idea or that idea, or maybe this year, invite someone to come along with you. Um. You know, the more we can help new hunters and educate new hunters and and help get them on the road for themselves, you know, the more likely we'll be able to do this thing ten years from now, because there's people that love this and will support it and stand up for it. So so that's one point I make. Another point I make, Spencer, is kind of adding on to what you said about how hunting week days is usually a better option than weekends to get away from all these people. Um. Another thing that I'd suggest is avoid popular times of the year too. So you know, opening day, first couple of days of this season, there's always a lot of people out there that are excited about it. And then when you get to the rut, there's always a lot of out of state hunting pressure in these big time white tail states, and that's when people you just schedule their vacations and really go after it. And then guns season and then maybe you know holidays like Thanksgiving. Uh, if you can get away from those big hot periods of the season and maybe plan your hunting trip October tenth or you know, November, I don't know, late November or something when you know you're not typically thinking about planning your white tail vacations, you might find that the woods are are much more open than they would have been on November one or October one or September one. So there's there's plenty of ways to pick your spots and pick your times and get away from some of this stuff. Um. Finally, my one other suggestion for dealing with this new hunting pressure would be having more backup plans. So whether it's hunting your home property or if you're going on out of state plant state hunt, um, you better have a Plan B and Plans C and Plan D for what hunt because if you get there and you only had one idea of what to do and then there's all these other hunters out there and you don't know what to do next. Well then you're s ol So you know, you've got to be able to adapt quickly and have a bunch of other options to turn to. And I think folks that went out into the public lands this year with one plan in mind, uh, you know, dealt with this in a pretty bummer kind of way. They had a lot of disappointment. Those that went out there with ten different ideas. They had to cycle through plan A, Plan B, plan C. But then they finally got to plan D and and they found their spots. So hunting pressure is probably going to continue to pick up, maybe some more COVID impacts this year. Maybe it's you know, us continuing to add new people into the fold. So let's not bemoan it. Let's let's adjust and uh and just get better at learning with that living with that reality. Um. That's that's where my head's at. Yeah. And it's it's a fairly like privileged thing for me to be like, oh just go on week days like be in the woods on Wednesday instead of a Saturday. I get it, Like, um, it's that's not the case for everybody. Um, but I just like put so much importance on having the ability to do that. If that's something that's sort of a lout of your control. You you don't have UM that that freedom to you know, hunt Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday instead of Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Like you said, the ABC thing is so important, and that's that's huge reason that I failed on D. I y haunts way more. Just five years ago. I'd have like a Plan A and a plan being a Plan C, and I'd get really sucked into A and and dedicate a whole bunch of like the scouting to that area and then UM boots on the ground time to that area, and then not have those backup plans. If I think about when I went to Wyoming this year, I killed my buck, and what was probably like Plan G or something like that. When I killed my bucking Montana this year, that was probably like Plan D. It was it was far removed from where I thought it was going to happen for me. And that is something that is in everyone's control, is to to sort of do that homework ahead of time. UM. And what you talked about Mark for the helping those people out and seeing those new people there. My guess is that other people were that guy in some other arena I was that guy with rockhunting. I was bugging all kinds of people. I was buying books, I was going to new areas. UM, I was doubling the amount of rock hounders in certain places just because my wife and I would go now instead of two people there there before. So I was that guy in some other arena. Um. And and nobody was mean to me or bemoan me that but I'm aware of or anything like that. And I'm guessing a lot of people were, whether it was um, mushroom hunting or rock hounding or whatever that is. UM, So think about it from from their perspective, Like you said, do you is there a territorial nature to rock hounders? Do you ever think people are sending you nasty looks? When you walk down the river bank? There there is like, um, a little bit of that fibbing that you have that's probably like most familiar with fishermen, where it's like very generic talk like, oh you have any luck today, oh a few little ones, um that that kind of thing. UM, But being outright mean or scowls Now, I have haven't witnessed that yet. Have you ever sent a fellow rock hound in the wrong direction? Because you're really worried about getting your fossilized wood or something. No. No, And this this is something that I said on a Mediator episode back in March. This is a hobby I'd love to share with people that I would love to, uh like, genuinely send you to my best spots and stuff. So if that's something you have questions about, hit me up. I'll try to send you in the right direction. Warning, though, I'm not going to do the same for haunting and fishing, still root for me. I'm still pulling for Spencer to kill it, eatter catch the fish. So you're you're probably going to get um a little bit of fibbing with a little bit of truth. Well, I'm I'm thoroughly fascinated by what you do with Rox Spencer, but I'm sure most people listening probably aren't, so we'll move on from that. That's right. So, so maybe the first big like weather event of the year that affected most hunters was another early October cold front. This one didn't quite shape up to what the early October cold fronts happened to be in twenty nineteen and eighteen as far as actually meeting what the forecast was. Um, I was kind of looking across the country the week prior, I think it was like October five or something like that was the first Saturday. Excuse me, it was October three was the first Saturday in October. And for a lot of hunters that is like sort of their first time in the woods, and and the forecast had a cold front coming up and didn't sort of live up to those expectations. It was maybe only like a tenor or thirteen degree drop from one high to the next. But this was something that we've seen multiple years around or some multiple years now, and it's got me thinking, Mark, after you're witnessing this in and where we get like this fifteen or twenty degree drop from one high to the next and guys go out and kill a whole bunch of deer, that this is now something that I and others should plan for. What I mean for that is expect there to be some sort of front that hits between like October one in October fifteen, and that you should have like a tree stand or two tree stands set up and and in mind just for that singular event, because it's gonna be such a great time to capitalize on buck movement and that's not something that I've ever considered before. But after doing what Fresh radio for five years and seeing a whole bunch of dudes kill big bucks and then seeing that cold front happen again in there, like, oh man, this is something that you can kind of plan for um and set some specific stands to try to kill a buck during that event. So so tell me this. It kind of sounds like I'm hearing a change of heart because for many years, Spencer, we've had conversations where I'm harping on how much I love cold fronts and and what a significant impact they have, and you've always been a contrarian voice saying, well, you know, a lot of science doesn't point to a direct correlation, and your your spiel has always been that cold fronts might be more of a self fulfilling prophecy so and that when hunters see a cold front coming, they're more likely to go hunting. They're more likely to hunt their good spots, and that's the reason why more dear get killed. Are you changing your mind? I am still um firmly seated in both of those. I still think that there uh is a lot of like uh, like you said, a self fulfilling prophecy. You have this confidence, you're more aware when you're sitting in your tree stand, you're sitting in a better spot. Um, you're like arriving earlier in the morning, or you're getting there earlier in the afternoon. I think that plays like as much of a role as the actual part about getting deer on their feet. Part of what like has me buy in to these early October cold front is that I don't I don't see it as much of a negative to be a little bit more aggressive, say on like October five, and then sort of leaving an area alone for the next like twenty or twenty five days. Um, if we're talking about a coal the front that's like on October UM nineteen or something, and getting really close to bedding and knowing that the movement, regardless of whether it's probably going to pick up in about a week. I think that's why I like these early October cold fronts so much. That I could be just slightly more reckless, um based on the weather and and I feel like I'm not hurting anything for the next month if I plan to leave that area alone. So I I have come around a little bit too cold fronts, but specifically these early October cold fronts interesting. Well, I certainly am. I'm right there with you. I love those cold fronts and if so much of and this is different based on the kind of hunting you do, right, I mean, for people to hunt the same property throughout the season, a lot of your strategy has to be around timing when to hunt verse when to stay out, because you want to keep hunting pressure low as much as possible. So that's a big part of of the plan when you hunt one place all the time. On the flip side, if you travel and you hunt a bunch of different public land spots, then it's more so you know, just choosing when do I go, When do I go, or when do I you know, hunt my very best spots hard for five days whatever it is. And as you mentioned, it's those early season cold fronts. There's lower downside um and and I think more significant upside. But at the same time, even the late October cold fronts mid delayed October, at least for me, the way I look at things more and more, I value early season and mid season cold fronts more than I used to, and I value rut cold fronts less than I used to, um, I'm jumping ahead a little bit here too. Some things we're gonna talk about related to the rut. But man, when you get that big cold front like you described in October five, there's a big difference between what might be the normal deer activity or the normal mature buck movement versus what you might get now with this temperature trap. And I think the same thing applies. Like October, there was a front. I don't remember exactly what the days were this year, but it was somewhere around the the twenties, early twenties, late teens, somewhere in that ballpark. And that was another one that just flooded social media with big bucks. I remember, now, this guy is not indicative of your average person, but Mark Dury killed like a one eighty. And then in three days between when that front hit across two different states, and and all these different people um that they were posting about I remember specifically, we're dropping them. So you can see that when it comes to the rut, I've actually I've actually put less value on those because there's already a bunch of good things happening. Culvern certainly helps. I'll love it. I'll take it, but it's not as crucial to me as it might be in other times of the year when I really need that extra bump to get a moving. Um. So sort I'm trying to say is I love cold fronts, but they aren't the end alb all and you know, as we'll get to a little bit, they certainly weren't something we could count on for a lot of people in November. Was there anything else in October or otherwise that you wanted to focus on before we get there? Well, here hearing you say that mark about UM now putting more stock into like early October and mid October cold fronts and less stock into roughty cold fronts. Um, I didn't realize until you said it, But that's like the sentiment that I share. That's sort of how my thinking has also evolved. So I've I've come around UM a bit too cold fronts, but not not quite all the way. And I think what you just mentioned there about you know how the effective in parts of the season is correct, and that's how I'm That's how I'm viewing them as well. UM. Something that was different, very different from to which is sort of an October event, is that harvest was mostly on time or a head of schedule this year, UM, which was much different than in We had a lot of wet fields or crops were staying in well past the rut for a lot of the Midwest. You know, there were there were a lot of places where combines we're still in the fields the week leading up to Thanksgiving. And I think if, like we talked about earlier with the COVID thing, if you were hunting someplace in like during the rout or during late October, and you're now sort of like basing what you saw in an egg heavy area based on like that five day window, it's maybe not the reality of how thing this really are for that property, because when you have all that standing corn and all that standing beings, it can sort of like mask the rut. And and it was something that every single person we talked to you in the Midwest in from like mid October to mid November talked about that, like, oh, we have perfect weather this weekend, um, but we have a bunch of standing crops everywhere. It was it was just a reality of and so that was not the case you probably if you hunted the same exact places from from mid October to mid November, you probably saw a lot different um deer patterns and probably a stronger rout because you didn't have so much deer movement masked by thousands of acres of standing corn. Yeah, that's um. It was definitely noticeable for a lot of people, like you said, and I personally experienced this. I experienced sit to a to an even greater degree than that. And in folks who have heard my stories about the season, no, maybe no where I'm going here with this, but I had a situation where my main properties where folks got their crops out so early and we're so ahead of the game that they started doing stuff that they almost never do around me at least, which was they were disking under their crops in October. So, you know, on on one of these properties that have hunted for a decade, now, this is the first time in ten eleven years that I had no food on these properties. Usually the harvest you know, the beans in uh sometime in October. They'll pick the corn sometime in early November, and then that stuff stays out there the picked fields until the next spring. And there's a lot of waste grain that these dear feet on. But for me, I had three different fields around me that provide almost hundreds of acres of food usually that one of them in October, one of them in November, and one of them in December were plowed under to completely dirt, nothing but dirt, um and that just wiped out food and it completely turned you know, the dear patterns on their head, I mean, stuff was completely different. I've never had hunting like this before. It wiped out some of my best spots all of a sudden became dear deserts. So so for me, and this is a unique maybe to some people, but maybe other people experience the same thing, I'm not sure. For me, what it put into my mind is that I really need to have a plan for that in future years. I can't count on crop fields to be the food source that I can count on all year long. UM. So this spring my plans to do more scouting to better understand, you know, what are the masked options where some of these little hidy hole spots that deer might start using more if that happens again next year or five years down the road. UM, I'm also gonna try to, you know, in the spots that I can do it I've got a couple of spots where I can do some small food plots and stuff. I'm going to you know, put more quantity of food out next year than I did this year, because this year I got really funky with trying to be really small and strategic UM, and then I had no other food and these food sources got destroyed earlier, and then I had nothing for late season. I'm never gonna let myself go into late season without high quality late season food source again in in this spot that I can do that. UM for the spots where I can't manage things public land spots I hunt or some private land by permission, I just need to have this goes back to what we mentioned earlier. I need more plans, C, D, E and f UM, you know, and the same thing goes for you know, next year. We might have a similar situation that we had three years ago or two years ago with crops standing forever. So you just gotta think about both what are you gonna do in each different scenario. Have a plan in place ahead of time so that you're not trying to figure this out on November five, when you're halfway through your trip and you don't have time to prepare. You just have to hunt, um trying to figure that stuff out now or in March or in June, so that once October or November gets here, you're just simply executing on a plan, whether that's Plan A or B or G. And I think now with you're probably have seen both ends of the spectrum as far as crops staying in very late and crops coming out very early. It's probably not what you're going to see on average years going forward. But now that you've you've sort of seen both ends of the spectrum, like you said, Mark, you can plan for those different events. What I think this is gonna make what I think this is gonna be hard to do now is if you're hunting a new area that you showed up on twenty nine, that you showed up in twenty it's probably gonna be hard to like develop some store of historical patterns um for deer herds, if you're in an egg heavy area learning a new place for like late October over the last couple of seasons because of these weird harvests that we've had, and we talk about historical patterns a lot mark on rot Fresh Radio and what I mean by that is like knowing how a deer herd um sort of functions on a landscape from the first day of the season to the last day of the season, with some predictability around, like here's where they're going to be in early October, here's where they're going to be at the end of October, here's where they're gonna be in mid November, etcetera. It's going to be hard to use a lot of the information that you got over these last two years because of like the sort of extreme examples that we've seen now with with harvest in That's a great point and you really need to try to take note of that somewhere. So don't just you know, you can take deer movement or a deer sighting or something, and then you try to tie that back to something and you could say, well, this happened because of the time of year, or this happened because of the weather. Well, now make sure you add the factor of, well, this was happening while we had standing corn all the way into December, or this was happening when we had a dirt field in October. Um, try to keep track of that somewhere so that you can look back on things as you mentioned, Spencer and make sure you have that context. Um. You know, I actually wrote about something that's pretty relevant to this. It was it was focused mostly on the impact of crop rotations and how that impacts deer movement. But it's it's pretty similar to this discussion too as far as when crops come out versus stay in, and it doesn't just impact the foods that are available. And you alluded to this with how corn can mask you know, running activity, how standing corn can mask what you see, Well, it also completely changes where dear bed because you know, this is something that I got a quote from John Eberhard about. He talked about how standing corn offers you know, sometimes the very best bedding and feeding in the same place. So when you have hundreds or thousands of acres of standing corn, not only does that just visually keep you from being all the activities happening, but it also keeps deer from using other betting areas. So you'll have all this activity happening in the middle of these fields you can't see, and then you know other bedding areas within the timber or elsewhere aren't being used when that stuff comes out, not only is there a lot more space that's visible, but now you will have deer relocating to those other areas too, So it's not just changing a food pattern, it's also changing a betting pattern, and and across the board all the transitions between there, here and there. Another thing to think about is how standing corn impacts the adjacent cover. So you know, deer might use uh patches short grass, like a little finger of grass. Maybe that goes out into a standing corn field. That might be an area that gets a lot of use when they're standing corn there because it still feels secluded and it's this kind of transition zone maybe or socializing area. But as soon as that standing corn's gone, now what used to be a pretty nice little spot for deer is wide open and they don't feel comfortable there. So there's there's this cascading effect of impacts when the crops come in or out like that. So I bring that all up to just caution anyone thinking through some kind of I don't know, trying to pin certain things to this change we're discussing. Think about all the ripple effects. Think about how the standing corn or the dirt field, or the lack of food or the changing bedding areas has changed all this different dear behavior and and maybe maybe going down this strow just leads to a lot of confusion. But I also do believe that if you see all the pieces of the puzzle clearly, it's going to help you put the pieces back together again. And and there's a lot of interesting, unique puzzle pieces related to crop rotation and harvests. So it's a good thing to be thinking about now. And when you're laying in bed one night and can't fall asleep, um and want to be thinking about hunting, it might be an interesting thing to ponder and uh, come up, come with some conclusions for next season. Yeah. I think historical patterns are so important and that can be a whole bunch of seper factors like when cattle are moved around, or when youth season opened, or when uh an upland bird season open to whatever that is. And the thing that you talked about there with crop rotations and crops coming in and out, um, I think have a really heavy impact on this on those historical patterns. So something to take note of in and going forward for everybody, you know, I'll say one more thing before you move on, Spencer is. We were just discussed like all these different factors that could impact how you pattern deer and how they're changing so much. And as I was talking through all that, I had two voices in my head. Had one voice in my head that was saying, like, you know, oh, think about how this could impact things, and think about how this could impact things. Yeah, yeah, Yetta, And that was the voice that was talking out aloud to all of you. Then there was this other voice in my head that was saying, Jesus, this sounds like a quick way to get confused as hell. And I would say that the way to deal with that, the way to actually make some sense out of these things. Probably a simple tool to help you do that is journaling, so writing down all these things that were happening and and having that alongside of what you saw. So this is something that I've talked about in the past, wanting to do, and some seasons I've gotten started with it. Some seasons I've never gotten started with it. But inevitably I've yet to complete an entire season doing a good job of this. And I hate myself for doing that because I know a lot of very good hunters that do this every year, and they do it well. So they track each one of their hunts, what they see, what the weather was like, what the all the different factors were that were going on. Right, then they track all that where they went, what the win direction was, so on, and then you know, next year when they're trying to plan their season, or ten years from now, when you have another year where the crops come out early, you can say, oh, you know what, this reminds me a lot of what happened that one season when I killed Trent. What you was like, Oh, that was en alright, I gonna go back to my journal, find the twenty nineteen season, and if you have that documented, if you have that written down, you actually can get an accurate understanding of what happened when it was like this before. Um, that's that's a lot harder to do accurately if it's all just stored in your head. So so maybe for me, a takeaway out of this is that I really need to get better at following through on my little journaling idea, because it seems like the simplest, most effective way to keep track of these things, all of these things that we talked about on Refresh Radio, Honestly, all of this could help you. You know, you could better take action on the stuff we talked about by having a journal and keeping track of what happened is in your own world. UM, there's there's my resolution. I'm doing that this season. I gotta do it. I like it, I like And that's UM just another example of having sort of a macro look at deer hunting. Like this episode is a macero look at there's value in it, UM. But you still need that trailer camera and tell that in season scouting boots on the ground stuff like that, UM is even more valuable, UM, or just as valuable is that that historical patterns and that macro look. Let's move on to the rut mark. UM. Something we don't talk about a whole lot and and we sort of only dedicate like one UM intro a year on rut fresh is the moon and the rutting moon in was on October thirty one. This was supposed to make for a good rutting moon or a sinc rut. That's not what we had in Do you remember the exact date of that mark. I feel like it was a little bit earlier, and it was supposed to have um like a drawn out rut or stronger movement in like those early October twenty days. Do you recall exactly what was gosh, I don't. For some reason I was jumping to I thought it was later. I thought it was like November four, but that you know, they all kind of blurred together now, so I wish I could tell you. Yeah, Well, maybe maybe what we just touched on there speaks volumes to how we view the rutting moon when we we can't recall like I I feel like I know cold or cold front dates very well in my head, but I can't recall just the rutting moon that was two seasons ago. It's good point. So the rutting moon was supposed to be on October thirty one this year, like I said, I was supposed to make for a stronger rut. Do you have any thoughts on this mark about twenties running moon? Man? My only thought is the same thing that we touch on most years, same thing I've written about on on the on the website, which is maybe there's a little bit of some kind of bump in how the moon impacts some amount of daylight activity, But it really is is very clear across a wide various studies, array of studies that the moon does not impact the timing of breeding. It doesn't impact when deer actually breed. Uh, that's going to happen. When it's going to happen because of other factors, mostly that being photo period, which is the amount of daylight which is impacting hormone levels and deer, which impacts when deer are ready to breed. That stuff happens across most parts of the country, year after year after year at basically the same time. Um Now, there certainly are other factors that can increase or dear decrease what we see of that what we actually see when we're hunting during the day. And you know, certainly people point to the moon is being one of those things that maybe could impact what we see. I have kept tabs on it, I've watched for it. I just I I have not seen enough two be really impressed with it to to say that I can prove without a doubt that, man, there's some strong anecdotal evidence at least that this thing makes a difference. Um So, I I just don't. I just don't give it much credence. I understand that some people do keep tabs on it, but it's it's yet to outweigh the other factors for me, that being the date on the calendar, and then yes, some temperature stuff. I've found some weather related stuff can either increase or decrease some of the visible activity. So ah, I don't know. It's a thing to talk about. It is a thing to look at, but I don't ever let it impact how I time my hunts, where I hunt, when I hunt, and um and I I guess there's not much more say than that spencer I've said. I've used analogy in the past, but for me, it's like bigfoot stuff. Like I'm wildly interested in the subject of bigfoot. I want to watch TV shows about bigfoot. I want to read articles about bigfoot. I want to hear your first hand experience with bigfoot. But at the end of the day, and like gun to my head, I don't really believe that bigfoot is real. And I don't really believe that rutting moon has helped me or hurt me kill a deer. Um. So that's that's sort of how I feel about it. And a few years ago Mark we wrote a piece for matthews website sort of looking at like the two sides of the coin on on both like extreme examples, like the rutting mood absolutely matters, and then the other side being the rutting mood absolutely does not matter. And uh, this is very specific to this analogy, but I remember seeing that the same percentage of deer hunters as the same percentage of general population believe that moon impacts dear movement also believe in Bigfoot, and so I now I like that analogy even more after seeing that. Is that for real? Yeah, that's for real. I have to look back at the specific number, but it was like it was within like a couple of percentage points of each other. That's so I like that. Let's let's talk about some more tangible things though. This year's rut was a very warm rut, not even warm for some areas, just damn or just downright hot. I recall like being in South Dakota on I don't know, like November four and getting in my pickup to drive out from my afternoon hunt, and the pickup was like damn near reading eighty degrees. It was just a really hot year. And I think for a lot of hunters when they set their rut cation they sort of pick like the first weekend of November or the second weekend of November, and that was just sort of how the calendar fell this year. Like November one through November seven was a Sunday through Saturday. November eight through November fourteen was November. Excuse me. November eight through November fourteen was a Sunday through a Saturday. Again, So you basically had those first seven days of the second seven days if you were picking a Roucasian. For most guys, if you picked that first seven days, you probably had super warm weather um, regardless of what part of the country you were in. And if you had that second set of seven days, then you probably had whether that you were more excited about. For a lot of places in the Midwest, there was some snow, You had these north winds that you expect there to be in November, but just a week prior that wasn't the case. We talked about this a little bit earlier, market, and that's not like talking about not putting a whole lot of stock into cold or warm weather during the rut um. I still feel that's the case, and I'm sure if I listened back on that episode where I was doing my routcation in South Dakota, I was cursing the weather. I think that was kind of an extreme example, though, when you have these daytime highs that are damn near like record highs. I think looking back, it was the the warmest in ben since like and prior to seen it was the warmest city Bend and like seven or eight years or something like that. So I a lot of hunters, if they were unsuccessful in that first seven days of November, we're probably cursing the weather. And if you picked that second set of seven days, you probably felt really good about your choice. So here's what I would say about it. Um different than the weather in the early season September or October. Those those cold fronts that we talked about that were so important, those fronts that would come through, would you know, push me or you to hunt when maybe we wouldn't hunt, or push us to hunt one of our best spots when maybe we would not hunt one of our best spots. I would tell you that when you get to the first couple of weeks in November. While I like cold weather during that time of year, and while I will certainly probably see better activity through a larger portion of the day with that colder weather. I'm not going to let the warm weather keep me from hunting or keep me from hunting good spots. So I guess what I'm saying there is that while the coal front is certainly helpful, it should not dictate as much of your strategy as I think it should in October or September um, because at those times of year, the weather might be the only thing that's pushing dear to to move more than usual. During November, during the rut, there's this really huge, freaking thing that's pushing dear to do crazy stuff, which is the fact that they want to procreate, and that makes deer do some wacky things, and it makes them move more in daylight, and it makes them move more in general, and it gives deer hunters opportunities. And if you waste any of those opportunities because you're sitting on the couch instead of being out there when you could be, you're making a mistake. Um, even on these crazy hot days, while the activity most likely is less than it would be otherwise and you're not gonna have as good of a hunt, it's still going to be you know, they're still gonna be the possibility of having those great moments. I had several really great hunts during these super hot days when you know, as we talked about earlier this year, I talked, I told, I've told the story about how I kind of had my epiphany about Rott hunts when all my buddies killed deer in Iowa when I had given up on the hunt because of the weather. Well, this year, I said, Nope, warm weather or not, I'm going to be out there. So I still haunted on those super hot days, and I ended up having an encounter with my top target buck in Michigan one day on one of those really hot days. Another day, I had an encounter with my one of my top target bucks on the back forty the draft time buck. And then three days later, on a day that would reach almost eighty degrees, I killed him. So I again was reaffirmed of the need to still be out there and still hunt the rut, just like you would hunt the Rut any other year, even if it's eighty. Um. Now, I'll say, like the movement on those days, at least for me in my experience, is much more pushed to the edges. So when it's thirty degrees and you had a big cold come through, and it's November five. You might have deer activity all day long. You could have great midday hunts. You could have great activity at any point in the day. That's what we all dream of when it was eighty degrees on November five or whatever. Um, it was much more a first couple of hours of the day and then last half hour of the day, and and that was just the reality of it. But you could still have some really good stuff happen in those portions. So what I found was that I was still going to be out there. I was still gonna hunt the mornings, in the evenings. I did not hunt as many mid days as I usually might, uh, simply because from everything I've seen and what I saw this year, it was it was dead in the middle of that really hot part of the day. And and my thought process here was one I was going to take those mid days and check off some important family time and then be One of the toughest things about hunting the rut when it's hot out is the fact that your focus is so much more easily lost when there's these long stretches of nothing. So when you've got the cold weather and you have activity all day, it's very easy to stay on point. It's very easy to to keep your eyes on the prize because every half hour or every hour you see another deer, you get excited. You're thinking it might happen. So for the next hour or two, your daying focused, you're scanning, you're being ready, you're doing the right things. But on the flip side, when it's eighty degrees on November five and after the first couple hours of the day, it's dead and you sit out there for six more hours and you haven't seen a single deer and you're sweating. That's the scenario when it's very easy to start looking at Facebook on your phone, or fall asleep and taken to halp, or just be digging around your backpack for twenty minutes trying to find different snacks. And that's when you know bad things happen when it gets to the last hour of daylight and you're still dicking around and then here comes up buck. So I think the biggest trick with hunting the warm weather is is staying focused and staying positive. Um, there certainly are some strategic things you can do a little bit differently on warm weather rut hunts, But I think the most important is just keeping the faith and keeping on it. If you do that, sticking to regular rut spots and knowing that the beginning of the day and the end of the day are still gonna be great. Um, that's a recipe for success. And I've seen now multiple times over the last ten fifteen years that's that's been the case. And uh, and this year it paid off from me at least. So that's that's my take on the hot rut. Did you did you get any other ideas or any other perspectives if you look back on our episodes we did during that time period, do you remember anything else from some of our guests along those lines or is it similar to what I just shared. It's similar to what you said, and that people are still hunting their best spots. They're not like staying out of the woods because it's gonna be seventy seven degrees at noon. Um. But I recall a few people mentioning that water factored into their setups a little bit more if they were choosing between two stand locations. Um, that's sort of the tiebreaker might be water when it's that hot and when you know, boxer up and they're moving all day long. And for me, the like warm front that we had at the very beginning of November, I didn't hate it, maybe as much as other hunters would, because I'm somebody who really struggles with all day sits, even when um, like the weather is ideal, I just get pessimistic. Um I I, like you said, get bored. I dick around on my phone or digging around in my bag, and so sort of having what I felt like was a good excuse to like get out of my tree stand from eleven am to one pm and and go home and not like be having the back of my head that like there's a buck under my tree stand right now. I and I confirmed with trail cameras later on that that wasn't the case. But it like made me feel comfortable to do that for a few days in a row. And sort of having the ability to do that like allowed me to haunt a little bit longer, because coming into my rocation, i'd like been on the road hunting for a while. Coming out of my rocation, I was gonna be on the road hunting for a little while. And it's like you know, a day of sleeping in on a hunt, or like a day of getting out of your tree stand I think can go pretty far in like keeping you in the game a little bit longer for you know, another day down the road or something like that. And so the rut in when we had these like crazy warm after neon temperatures, I didn't hate it because, like you said, I was confident that I wasn't missing out on something big. It could have bait me in the ass, but it didn't as far as I know. This fall. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's funny. I've I've had a real change of heart when it comes to this too, where for a lot of years I have always been an advocate for, especially to myself, of you know, if there's a chance, you gotta be out there, so hunt every single day all day. You know, no excuses, play a champion, uh, you know, etcetera, etcetera. And and I'm kind of switching it up now where I'm seeing the burnout effects of hunting all day and you know how that can result in you losing focus, uh, losing some of the fun um, hurting relationships with family, that kind of stuff, And and now. Maybe it's because I'm getting old, maybe it's because I've got kids. Um, but I but this year, especially maybe last year a little bit too, I've started to realize, you know, just what you just said, Spencer. You know, taking a morning off, or taking the middle of the day off and having lunch with the kids, or taking a little nap or having a nice meal, that kind of stuff can do so much to restore your energy and your focus later on, and and you're fun. And again, like everyone listening knows, I am over the top in a lot of ways about hunting. I really put a lot of pressure to to get better, to learn more, to do better, etcetera, etcetera. But if any of this stuff, if any of these goals or you know, arbitrary plans you put on your your hunting, if any of that stuff keeps you from enjoying it, then what the hell are we doing? So so that's something that that each year I'm learning a little bit more about and and I think it relates to this, I'm not gonna feel as guilty as I used to about, you know, coming in the middle of the day and and doing that kind of stuff. Yeah, I might reduce my chances to kill a buck at that time period, but at what expense. So um, So that's that's that's a takeaway from me, all right, Mark, Well, let's now move to late season. Um And and this is a pretty mackerel look at like post rut and the month of December in general, but a lot of the country had very mild weather. If I think back to Rut Fresh episodes, um for in December, I recall a lot of pessimistic hunters that I talked to you because the weather just wasn't there. And that was often like the takeaway after an interview that it's like, oh, I think the movement this weekend is going to be a four out of ten. But if we get that weather, um that there's a you know, chance of snow and the temperatures draft another ten degrees, then I think it's gonna be an eight out of ten. And there was just a lot of hunters telling me that for the December episodes. And I'm sure you saw it in your area. Um And this is probably most like important or affected people the most at hunt in the Midwest that sort of have a few places in mind that they're going to be in the middle of December, especially if it's like some gun season or whatever, that you're gonna be hunting these specific food sources in the afternoon and there's gonna be uh, you know, forty deer rolling into this field or whatever. When you have this mild weather and there's a whole bunch of available food out there that's still like natural brows and they don't have to congregate to the best and the most obvious food sources. That can make it tough on late season hunters. And I think we had a lot of that for Midwestern white tail hunters in the majority of December. Around like Christmas, we got weather event, but leading up to that, there wasn't a whole lot of weather. I think that would make people excited. I know more you've talked about this in the podcast, You've written about our website, But how important whether it can be for late season white tailors. Yeah, it's it's the exact opposite of what I was just describing. For November. I think that that weather can make or break your late season hunts, especially you know, especially if you're after you know, one of those big old mature bucks that by the time you get to the late season, they have been you know, ran through the ringer by months of hunting, and they really don't want to move a lot. They're trying to conserve energy, they don't want to put themselves in extra danger because they've been dealing with hunters for months now. Um, So these deer are pretty darn conservative whether when it comes to what they're willing to do and when they're willing to do it. Um, you could still you know, see good dear dough movement and young bucks will still be out and about, but at least, you know, unless you've got one of these pristine are a thousand acre preserves where you know, these deer aren't pressured all season. If you're hunting pretty real world stuff. It just seems like the number of times you'll get that big old buck to get on his feet and step out somewhere in the relative open where you might be able to get a shop those days do not happen very often in a given month, And it really seems to be dependent on those weather events, getting that mega cold front um or snow event something like that. And yeah, without it, I mean, you're in a tough spot. It's not like you can't get it done without it, but it's much much more difficult, and this year was certainly example that. I'm really glad that I filled my last buck tag before December because I would have been a tough spot. I don't think I would have got it done. Um in previous years, I could have. This year at least the buck I was trying to kill. This year, Um, he probably would have been unkillable on the properties that I could hunt, both because of the bad weather and because of the whole food thing I mentioned earlier. So um, that said, if you looked at social media and use it as a barometer, once that big cold, snowy weather start hitting around like just I think it was like somewhere around Christmas, like you said, and then into early January. Um, if you've been paying attention to stuff the last like ten or fifteen days, for those people that still had seasons opening, there's been a bunch of big deer hit in the ground a lot, and um, and I think it had to do with that. So yeah, I pray for cold weather and snow in December. And when you don't get it, you gotta get creative. And I honestly don't have a good answer for what to do you can. You can seek out sanctuaries, you can get a little more aggressive and try to figure out how to get tighter to bedding at that time of year where maybe they will move a little bit, you know, even with the warmer weather. But that stuff is tough. I mean, you really need to have a strong set of experience and and really uh good knowledge of where this dey're gonna be better at this time of year and what you can get away with. And for a lot of people, that's that's outside the realm of possibility. So hoping for the good weather is always the best case scenario. Yeah. I think back to and I had a muzzle loaders tag in South Dakota which was good for the home month of December, and I ended up killing um pretty late in that season, but almost every single hunt that winter for me, there was snow on the ground. And then I didn't do a lot of hunting this December. But I was down in Kansas at the beginning of December and we just had like terrible weather for most of the time. I was saying, like, man, if we just had that weather, like there'd be shooters out here every morning, every evening. That wasn't the case. Uh, we still saw a lot of good bucks, but the Cricks property sort of overpowered the poor weather that we had. But if I was in a lesser situation that didn't have um like this, this manicured property for white tails, it would have been really tough to to kill a good buck because of what we just talked about. That mild weather didn't have those bucks up and in the most obvious places. If you want to um like, if you this is going to be a thing that happens again, and it happened you know every five years where there's a really mild December and there's no snow and there's warm temperatures and stuff like that. Tony Peterson just wrote an article for us on the media dot com called how to kill a late season Buck without hunting Food that talks about some creative ways to address what you and I just talked about, Mark, So i'd encourage you to go and give that article a read. Well, Spencer, I think that's a good idea. And now that I think we've wrapped up our big takeaways from twenty twenty, unless you've got something else you want to add, I would like to get to the question that all of us have been wondering for the last hour, the question that has been gnawing away at me from the inside Spencer hell one through ten scale, How would you rate the overall countrywide quality of the twenty hunting season and the conditions that impacted it overall? Um, I would say something like and eight or seven and a half. I'll do seven and a half. I think the positives that you had were an early harvest, you didn't have the rut masked um by a whole bunch of standing corn. But then the negatives being that you were probably dealing with increased pressure via COVID, and it seemed like we just had we we were dealt an average hand of forecasts, and excuse me of cold frown. I remember when we did the recap episode in we were like, my goodness, you could not have asked for better cold fronts? Is fall like if you pull out a calendar and just circled the saturdays that you want, circled the days in general that you want, a cold fronts would probably be a Saturday. You got them that year. That wasn't really the case, UM. In in so you didn't have great weather, but we had um a better like crop harvest for hunters. So I would say, like a seven and a half. What would your answer be, Mark, I think you're way too generous. Was a bit across the board man, not only everything they happened across the world, but how about I mean you just you just said the same thing as I would say, which was we had well a lot more hunting pressure in places that made people that weren't prepared for it struggle. Then you had the you know, not a lot of great cold fronts. Then you had the warm front and a run, and then you had the lousy warm December. I mean, that's a lot of stuff and you're still giving us like a B. No way, I gotta give us a five. That's a five. That was that's a lot of negativity around factors at least that can that can impact dear movement. So if you had success this year, kudos to you because you dealt with some challenges and you still got it done. And and I don't think, well, knock on wood man, I shouldn't even say it, but I think one should be better. There's got to be something better coming down the road. Um. That that said, though, I guess let's let's ask that, let's quantify that on a one through ten scale spencer, what do you predict for it's gonna be a tan. I want to I want to bring up a few things that I didn't necessarily address when I was giving my score, and that's thinking about like how bad things could have been if we look at some of the extremes from years in the past, like e h D UM for the last three years on Meat eat Years website, I've written in e h D recap for the country is the most mild one that I've written UM compared to twenty nine or eighteen, So that's a huge plus when UM that can uh often be like a huge negative. So we didn't have the h D thing. They're also I don't think was really widespread flooding in like we dealt with I think he was in twenty nineteen. There was there was a lot of flooding, and that was like what sort of cross caused um this late crop harvest. And if you're somebody that hunts near water, whether it's the edge of a lake or river bottom or creek drandage whatever, um, that can cause like some lost acres for fall and so I think if you weigh those in there, I would agree maybe the seven a half was a little bit optimistic. U. I'm not gonna come all the way down to a five, but I would say like a six and a half or a seven. Now after after we talk this through even more to thorough all right, and you've convinced me, especially the e h D thing, I'll bump it up to a five and a half on mine. So all right, there you go, uh Spencer, thank you for for recapping all this stuff, and and thank you for all your great work all hunting season long, talking to hunters, pulling in these great insights and reports from across the country. UM. It honestly helps me every week. I enjoy it and and it does help give me some something to think about as I planned my own hunts. So kudos do you, man, and I'm looking forward to doing it again this year. Thanks man. I'm also looking forward to season six and we will be back at it in September. I will talk to you guys in nine months. Sounds like a plan, all right, and that's going to do it. I hope you enjoyed that one. Hope we've given you a thing or two to ponder as we head into the planning phase of our next hunting season. And UH, if you're taking a little time from the woods and are looking for something to fill your time and while away these cold wintry days, I've got two quick suggestions for you. Number One, the Back forty show, it's wrapped up, it's done. It's out there on the Mediator YouTube channel. You can binge watch both seasons over there. Check them out. I'm proud of that. There's a lot of work and I'd love for you guys to get to enjoy and experience that story. And speaking of stories, the second recommendation I've got for you is that book I wrote that came out last year, well, I guess two years ago technically as far as the calendar back in twenty nineteen, That Wild Country. It's the story of the history of our public lands and my experiences exploring them, learning about them and try to understand what's going on today and how do we how do we make how do we make we make make sure that these wild places and wild up to hunt and pursue are still out there for future generations. So you can pick that up, uh, in a number of places we've got autograph copies over on the meetater website. You can also pick them up from local book stores. You can buy them on land from Amazon. There's the audio version over on Audible and plenty of places like that. So thank you in advance for all of you who have purchased and read the book over the last couple of years. And if you're looking for something to feel a little bit of spare time or some cold nights, I think that might be worth checking out. So thank you all again for your time, your tension, and until next time, stay wired to HU.

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